big dog

I heard Pagan was trying out a new pitch, but the results weren't good so he's going back to throwing overhand. The underhand motion just wasn't fooling anybody.

Bartender, please buy my friend another and I'll have what he's having. Looks like it's working pretty well.

Let's maybe wait until, I don't know, May 1 to declare the loss of E-S to be an epic failure, OK? Orlando Arcia hit some balls pretty hard, too. Mahle might have a couple of pitches left in his shoulder.

Blyleven

He had been a catcher before he was drafted, true. His first year he played 22 games at catcher, 27 games at 1B, and 7 in RF. Then it was exclusively 1B.

Yes, I like Hall of Famers too...the really elite athletes often stick at a top position, but an awful lot of the other players move around. Add Cuddyer to the list of Twins shortstops-who-weren't-shortstops. It took him a while to work his way to being a successful right fielder. I think this is just a constant part of baseball. Harmon never had a position, at least not until the DH was created. Rod Carew was moved from second to first. Justin Morneau was a first baseman, but of course that's where you put someone who can't really play any other position so I don't think that counts.

He also mentioned that people have been trying to improve his power ever since he was drafted, so he included the Blue Jays and not just the Twins.

I looked at Twins starters going back through 2010. Now I have PTSD. It's been rare for the Twins to have even three good starters through a season. Our starting pitching is substantially better than the Twins have in, roughly, forever. We don't have a Johan Santana, true. We also don't appear to have anyone with an expectation for anything like the pitchers we've been using to start anywhere from 10-25 games a year. It's really amazing looking back and seeing how many teams had guys with terrible ERAs and high numbers of starts. Examples: Blackburn, 2010 5.42/26 Duensing, 2011 5.23/28 Blackburn, 2012 7.39/19 Hendriks, 2012 5.59/16 Walter, 2012 5.69/12 Pelfrey, 2013 5.19/20 Diamond, 2013 5.43/24 Hernandez, 2013 6.83/12 and on and on. I'm looking forward to this rotation. Even with the obligatory usual injuries this looks like a really solid group.

I think having Correa signed to a long-term deal is a big upgrade to him on a one-year deal, which is all last year was. I think he worked hard last year and was team-focused, but I think that's going to be even stronger this year. We've upgraded in numerous ways, as noted above. I'm going to miss Luis as a fan, but I don't think he's irreplaceable at all. Remember all the comments about where he might play? We've got guys in all those places. No more bar altercations, please.

Thank you. I'm not sure how many appearances you are expecting from him this year, but I'd like to bet the under, please.

And pay him a major league salary for (probably) making a bad choice that turned out to be really bad? No thanks.

I watched Vasquez make a great throw from his knees in the playoff, catching a speedy runner at second. I thought "Man, why can't we have a catcher like that?". Now we do. I wanted to upgrade our outfielders so we didn't have Cave and Contreras both playing frequently. We did- whatever you think about Gallo and Taylor, I'm pretty sure we all agree it's an upgrade there. I wanted another good starting pitcher. We got one. There are flaws. But this should be a good year, if we can avoid having 2/3 of the team getting hit by a bus.

I don't like the rule, but it just increased the value of having Michael Taylor and Nick Gordon on the team as potential pinch-runners.

<OK, not related to bullpens, except that we won't have this kind of starting pitching in today's environment no matter how good they are> Looking back at some Twins staffs- how's this for a group of healthy innings-eaters? 2004 record GS ERA IP ERA+ FIP Johan Santana 20-6 34 2.61 228 182 2.92 Brad Radke 11-8 34 3.48 219.2 136 3.55 Carlos Silva 14-8 33 4.21 203 112 4.36 Kyle Lohse 9-13 34 5.34 199 89 5.06 Four guys with 33 or 34 starts. Wow. Where was Hoss Radbourn? (Although giving Lohse 34 starts isn't exactly a huge success, at least he was durable.) Other guys who started: Terry Mulholland, 15 Seth Greisinger, 9 Matt Guerrier, 2 J.D. Durbin, 1

When is any front office not betting on a bullpen? I don't see many bullpens where I think "wow, they're set for the year because nothing can possibly go wrong". I don't know that having Fulmer would have made me all that happy- he wouldn't make up for a Duran/JLopez problem. Maybe a lack of improvement by Pagan. And will he be better than last year or worse? A new pitcher would change the odds a bit, but it's always a bet.